Is Church-Going Still Relevant?

Despite Christianity still being Australia’s largest religion (61.1% compared with 7.3% of all other religions combined), the proportion of Australians identifying as Christian has been steadily declining over the past century. Compared to 1911, when 96% of people identified as Christian, the 2001 census recorded the figure of 68% and the latest Census, taken in 2011, recorded a drop to 61.1%.

New figures released in 2017 show that some 7 million Australians (30.1% of the population), said they did not identify with any religion at all, a figure that’s up from around 4.8 million (22.3%) in 2011’s Census.

The average church attender’s age has increased to 53 years and while the 70+ age group is still strongly represented, the younger generation is increasingly underrepresented. For example, 20-39 year olds make up about 34% of the national population but only 21% of church attenders.

Australia has more churches (13,000) than schools (9,500) yet church attendance has also declined. Those attending at least once per month has dropped by more than half when compared to statistics taken in 1972 (from 36% to the current attendance rate of 15%). Less than one in seven of the Australians who ticked “Christianity” on their census form regularly attend a church.

Six Top Reasons Why People Don’t Go To Church

For many people (as much as 47%), church is considered to be irrelevant to their life. The following diagram shows the top six reasons why Aussies aren’t going to church. This is a survey of both non-church goers and irregular attenders but these reasons are perhaps also relevant for those once-regular attendees who have dropped off.

Is Church-Going Still Relevant In 2019?

Nearly 50% of Australians believe the answer is ‘no’. It’s interesting to note in the following diagram that out of a list of 13 facilities and services that people agree a community needs, a local church comes in at 13 and 9 respectively (only scrapping ahead of English classes and migrant support, in the case of the latter). Clearly, for many people, church-going is not only personally irrelevant, it’s also considered practically superfluous to a community’s needs.

Church-going has become less relevant for Christians and non-Christians alike. Considerations such as meaningful engagement, purposeful worship, approachable ministry or authentic beliefs are all issues for people questioning the relevance of church and church attendance in their life.

Does Church-Going Make Me A Better Person?

It depends.

Similar to the colloquial, often humorous question “how long is a piece of string?”, the answer is; it depends. It depends on how you measure it.

Church-going, in and of itself, doesn’t make a someone a better person (or Christian, for that matter). No-one would suggest that hanging out in the local soccer club means you’ll become a better soccer player. Or that spending time every week in a car sales yard will make you a better driver. Attendance at church, in itself, really means nothing at all.

And, in fact, it could be argued that if you are attending because of the wrong motivations, then church-going could actually be detrimental for you. Going to church, just to keep your spouse or family happy, because you feel guilty if you don’t, or because you feel a sense of religious obligation, are never meaningful reasons to attend. Religious obligation – a ‘works-based’ mindset – is often one of the major causes of church burnout.

But when the purpose of church and church-going are both considered, we can measure the outcomes in a different way and get quite a different answer.

Church Is About People

The Greek word ekklesia, which has been translated as ‘church’ in our English Bibles, is found 114 times in the New Testament (the original word is actually translated assembly three times, church 74 times, churches 35 times, and congregation twice). The original definition is of an assembly of people convened at a public place, often for the purpose of deliberating.

The root meaning of church is not that of a building, but of people and it was used by the New Testament writers to describe the community of believers gathering together. These believers would meet in various places, such as homes (Romans 16:5) or the temple (Acts 2:42). It wouldn’t be incorrect to express their meetings in this way; that the early believers ‘churched together’ (or assembled together).

The word church, in time, also came to be used to describe the building in which Christian believers would meet and so ‘church’ is now understood to be either the people, the building or both.

Yet the biblical definition of ‘church’ is actually about the people – those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ for salvation (John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 12:13). These people are the community of believers who gather together and the Apostle Paul describes it like the human body, a living thing – made up of real people (1 Corinthians 12:12). In fact, he devoted a whole chapter in the book of Corinthians (in the New Testament) to the principles and purpose of ‘church’ and how each ‘member’ is to be valued for the diversity and contribution they bring to ‘the body’. In essence, church is about relationship.

“Church is not an event you go to. It’s a family you belong to.” – Rick Warren

What Is The Purpose Of Church?

The purpose of church (believers getting together) can be briefly summarised as follows:

To honour God and His Son – ‘worship’
To grow community – ‘fellowship’
To develop personally – ‘discipleship’
To provide service to others – ‘ministry’
To share the Good News – ‘evangelism’

These purposes are all outworked in the context of relationship – with God, His son and with each other. Church-going is about ‘giving’ and ‘getting’. Church life is designed to enrich our lives, ease our burdens, and provide supportive relationships for hard times. It develops character growth and maturity so that we can support others, when needed. Service within a church should be something that fills a person with joy and deep personal fulfillment – the natural outworking of a life based on being a certain kind of person, not doing certain kinds of things. Church life – life with Jesus – is for those who are weary and burdened – because in Jesus we find rest.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.…” – Jesus, Matthew 11:28-29

Church-going provides opportunity to undertake all the purposes that a community of believers consider to be important aspects of their Christian life.

So if we ask the question again – does church-going make me a better person? – the answer is yes – depending on how you measure it.

If going to church makes you feel like you have a place to belong, gives you support and encouragement, fosters a sense of individual growth and development ‘in Christ’, without judgment, and provides opportunity for you to extend God’s love to others, then yes, church-going can help you be a ‘better person’.

In this context, church-going is definitely still relevant and, it could be argued, essential for healthy, well functioning communities. Church – true church – helps people grow in the ways that matter most – in their relationship with God and Jesus and their relationship with others. This is the Bible’s definition of true happiness and a flourishing life.

“In the biblical sense, true human flourishing [happiness] and well-being can only be found in relationship with God and through alignment with His coming kingdom..it is important to see that this flourishing can never occur fully apart from a proper relationship with the creator God. All of the Bible’s vision of human flourishing both now and in the age to come either assumes or explicitly states this fact.” – Jonathan Pennington, PhD, A Biblical Theology Of Human Flourishing

Overcoming Negative Experiences Of Church

For many people, however, church is not the experience they hoped or thought it would be. Rigid expectations, subtle (or not so subtle) spiritual manipulation, a performance-driven culture or unhealthy theology all combine to ensure the experience of ‘church’ is one of failure, disconnect, disappointment and isolation, from both community and God. This is a sad but nonetheless true fact and the experience of many people.

God’s gift of freedom, found in His gospel of grace, is easily perverted and often squandered by men or women placing religious burdens and rituals on their fellow man. Jesus condemned the religious leaders of his day for exactly this, commenting that “they tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them…” (Matthew 23:4).

God – and by extension, church – should not be an impersonal force to be used to make people behave in certain prescribed ways. God is a deeply real and loving Father who invites us into a personal relationship with Him and whose love and acceptance should be manifested by those who ‘church together’ in His name.

So, Is Church-Going Still Relevant?

“Christians need relationships to grow. We don’t grow in isolation; we develop in the context of fellowship” – Rick Warren

Communities also need relationships to flourish and grow, to provide stability and support, and to offer compassion and encouragement. Church can play an important part in people’s lives, both Christian or non-Christian, to facilitate these endeavours. Not only that, with the weight of life’s pressures and the uncertainty of life’s big questions bearing down on people, church is often the place people will turn to ‘find God‘.

Church is (or should be) the place where the Good News of God’s salvation is joyfully lived and unconditionally offered – a place of support and fellowship for those who believe and a place of welcome and hope for those who don’t. Discovering that God has a plan and purpose for you – if you want it – is the most empowering, life-changing realisation in the world!

“God’s way is not a matter of mere talk; it’s an empowered life.” -1 Corinthians 4:20

God’s love is demonstrated to the world through a Christian’s application of it to others (John 13:35), and this love in operation becomes concrete evidence of the power of God’s message, as given through Jesus, to transform lives. ‘Church’ (a community of believers gathering together) provides a powerful opportunity to do that, and benefits believers and non-believers alike.

“If it isn’t good news, it isn’t the Gospel. The Gospel is about what God has done for us and what we can become in Christ; it’s about Christ being the answer to our deepest needs. The Good News offers lost people what they are frantically searching for: forgiveness, freedom, security, purpose, love, acceptance and strength. It settles our past, assures our future, and gives meaning to today. It is the best news in the world.” – Rick Warren, A Purpose Driven Church

If your experience of church or church-going has been one of hurt, you are not alone. Many people have experienced the disillusionment and distress of discovering that church is not perfect. Church is made up of humans; damaged and sinful by their very nature. In fact, it would be surprising to not find hurt within a church, given this fact. Not every church hurts people, but most churches have hurt someone at some point, simply because churches are made up of imperfect people. This reality can leave people reluctant to re-engage, afraid of being hurt again, wanting to protect themselves, and questioning the place of church or even God in their lives.

However, it’s important to separate human failure from the love and freedom that God offers. Take time to recover from your negative experience. Let yourself heal. And then find a church where you are able to live freely, with a light heart in response to the freedom and forgiveness given by God.

Be mindful though; if you are looking for another church because you don’t feel you can really be “spiritual” without it, or you believe attending church makes God love you more, you really need to examine what true spirituality is and (re)acquaint yourself with what the grace of God means. If, however, you long for warm, accepting fellowship, spiritual encouragement and growth, and the opportunity to serve others in love, then you’re on the right track.

While this approach should not minimise your experience or negate your feelings of hurt or pain, it does enable you to move past the burden of bitterness, which, in the end, will destroy peace, joy, freedom and life itself.

True Religion

Religion is defined as “a cultural system of designated behaviours and practices, world views, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organisations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.“

Yet, there is no actual consensus among scholars as to what precisely constitutes a religion.

Nearly 85% of the world’s population identifies as being religious, claiming affiliation with one of the five largest religions; Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or forms of folk religion. These different religions all have distinct rules, regulations and beliefs that form part of that particular religion.

Christianity is the world’s largest religion, with over 2.4 billion followers. Growing out of Judaism – its earliest converts were Jews who were followers of Jesus Christ in the first century – it quickly spread from Judea into Asia Minor and then further abroad. By the fourth century, Christianity had become the official state religion of the Roman Empire. Christianity has, in fact, played a major role in the shaping of western civilisation.

What Is Religion?

When the Latin word religio found its way into the English language as religion, around the 1200s, it took the meaning of “life bound by monastic vows” or monastic orders. It eventually came to distinguish the domain of the church and the domain of civil authorities.

Yet the ancient and medieval world understood the word religio quite differently. For the ancients, it carried a meaning of individual virtue of worship, never as doctrine, practice, or actual source of knowledge. In Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, there is no precise equivalent of the English word religion. The Greek word threskeia, used in the New Testament, is sometimes translated as religion, however, the term was more correctly understood as ‘worship’, well into the medieval period.

In the Quran, the Arabic word din is often translated as religion in modern translations, but up until the mid-1600s, translators expressed din as law.

Religion, in itself, is a modern, western concept and it was understood in quite a different way by those who lived in the ancient world. Today, religion would perhaps be explained as a system of rules or practices governed by certain beliefs. The ancient world would have viewed this concept as law and saw religion quite differently; as the idea of worship or reverence of God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things and piety, or diligence.

Religion Has A Bad Reputation

Discussion about religion is often long, complex, divisive and inconclusive. It doesn’t come as any surprise that the IPSOS Global Poll released in 2017 shows that a majority of Australians (63%) believe that religion does more harm than good. Only one in four Australians say religion defines them as a person.

Religion has been much maligned – and perhaps with good reason. Unfortunately, when men and women get their hands on religion, it is often for the purpose of control and manipulation of others. Many terrible acts have been committed ‘in the name of religion’ and supposedly with a divine blessing – yet God is often furthest from the minds of those perpetrating such acts. In reality, God is often the last priority; intolerance is the driving force behind many actions that claim permission on religious grounds.

“Christianity itself has a long history of such intolerance, including persecution of Jews, crusades against Muslims, and the Thirty Years’ War, in which religious and nationalist rivalries combined to devastate Central Europe.” | The New York Times

What Is True Religion?

The aim of this article is not to impress on any reader the ‘rightness’ of our particular beliefs or doctrines. Whether a man or woman chooses to be religious, or not, should be a deeply personal consideration, without manipulation or coercion from others.

Rather, it is intended to be an honest examination of what ‘true religion’ should be for any committed Christian, professing belief in Jesus’ saving work and God’s divine plan for the world.

If we have accepted Jesus as our saviour, our beliefs and our practices must line up and work together in harmony. We must profess and practice true religion, not merely an inadequate form, which hasn’t touched our hearts. Timothy warns against a form of godliness, which appears righteous from the outside but in reality denies the power that godliness has to radically transform us (2 Timothy 3:2-5).

The word religion is only used a few times in the Bible. But the concept of religion, as it was originally understood, actually permeates the entire Bible. True religion, at its core, is about the relationship between God and ourselves and how this transforms us from the inside out.

This understanding began early on in the book of Genesis, where men began to call on the name of God (Genesis 4).

“Now men began to worship God, not only in their closets and families, but in public and solemn assemblies. The worshippers of God began to distinguish themselves: so the margin reads it. ‘Then began men to be called by the name of the Lord’ — or, to call themselves by it. Now Cain and those that had deserted religion had built a city, and begun to declare for irreligion, and called themselves the sons of men. Those that adhered to God began to declare for Him and His worship, and called themselves the sons of God.” | Benson Commentary

Another commentary has this to say:

“The name of God signifies in general ‘the whole nature of God, by which He attests His personal presence in the relation into which He has entered with man, the divine self-manifestation, or the whole of that revealed side of the divine nature, which is turned towards man’. In Genesis 4, we have an account of the commencement of that worship of God which consists in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, or in the acknowledgment and celebration of the mercy and help of God. Those of the family of Seth began, by united invocation of the name of God of grace, to found and to erect the kingdom of God.” – Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

True religion – pure religion – is the acknowledgment of our need for God’s mercy, our worship of Him and what He has done for us and the application of His character in our lives, because of our thankfulness.

True religion is the seamless unity of believing and doing and it’s demonstrated throughout the Bible by countless examples of faithful men and women. (Hebrews 11:1-40). It’s an active faith, shown by both word and deed and not just empty talk.

“Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless (‘the fatherless and the widow’) in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.” – James 1: 26-27, MSG

Jesus put it in another way:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.” Matthew 22:37-39, NIV

And again, in Hosea:

“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” – Hosea 6:6, BSB

What True Religion Isn’t

True religion isn’t rules-based or rituals-based but is instead firmly rooted in faith. Faith, in response to God’s action in our lives, alters everything about us; our daily relationships, our perspective on life, our interactions with family, neighbours, friends and community. When God is present and completely sovereign in our lives, when we adhere to God and declare for Him and His worship, God calls us His children and part of His family. This is religion in its purest and most true form.

God’s gift of freedom is easily perverted and often squandered by men or women placing religious burdens and rituals on their fellow man. Jesus condemned the religious leaders of his day for exactly this, commenting that “they tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them…” (Matthew 23:4).

God is not an impersonal force to be used to make people behave in certain prescribed ways. He is a deeply real and loving Father who invites us into a personal relationship with Him. It is always an invitation, never coercion or guilt-driven; we are given space and freedom to answer His invitation. Through Jesus, we have been set free and are invited to participate in God’s saving work with humanity.

How important it is for any sincere and genuine Christian to constantly promote this extraordinary message of God’s grace and ensure we don’t unwittingly return to a life of rule-keeping, which God finds no pleasure in.

What people need to see and experience from us is true religion – active, transformative and inspiring. The kind of religion that Jesus demonstrated every day.

“Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.” | Galatians 2:21, MSG

The modern concept of the meaning behind the word religion is an abstraction that involves distinct sets of beliefs or doctrines. Its usage, in this way, began with texts from the 17th century, resulting from events such as the splitting of Christendom during the Protestant Reformation and globalisation in the age of exploration.

However, the word religion, from the Latin religio, meaning ‘to bind’, is a word which in the ancient and medieval world was used to refer to individual virtue of worship; respect for what was sacred, and a reverence for the divine. It described an attitude of being rather than creed.